EDITOR'S NOTE — This is the first of a two-part story on Mohammad Bahmani's quest to run the Boston Marathon.

EDWARDSVILLE — A moment after the big log that had come rolling in with the tide came crashing down on his shin, Mohammad Bahmani realized he should never have reached down to pick it up.

It was wider than his arm span, and heavy, and when he finally got the thing rolling, a wave came along, lifted him in the air and slammed the log down across his lower leg.

Bahmani lives in Edwardsville with his wife Amy, a speech pathologist, but at the time they were in California visiting his uncle.

Now he was waving off suggestions that he go directly to the emergency room rather than wait for their return to Edwardsville the next day.

"But I was in amazing pain," Bahmani said recently during an interview at his home. "My feet were swollen, and I couldn't put my pants on; I had to cut off my jeans."

For the past 34 years, Bahmani has been a software programmer for the non-profit law enforcement agency Regional Justice Information Service. He and his team create software that helps protect police officers, and other law enforcement officials.

But he is also a runner, and the injury struck a blow to his plans to run his first marathon, the 2016 Go! St. Louis Marathon, on April 9.

It was a broken tibia, Dr. Michael Mulligan told him when they returned to Edwardsville. It would likely knock him out of running for six to eight months, Mulligan added. But he had also caught a break because the fracture was linear, meaning there would be no need for a cast.

And he could walk.

Still, the plan was that the Go! St. Louis run would be his first step on a path to running the Boston Marathon. It had been in the back of his mind since he was a 9-year-old growing up in Iran. "I want to be in that some day," he told his mom when he first saw the Boston Marathon on TV.

The injury weighed on his mind, he says, and the night before Go! St. Louis he became deeply depressed.

The thing to do, he decided, was to drive over to St. Louis the next morning and at least be part of the surge of energy that comes with the start of big races.

"My plan was to go in there, put the number on, maybe walk a little while, and come back," he said.

But the frenzy stuck with him beyond the start, and before long he found that he had gone four miles, six, then 12 miles. Halfway through the marathon, he still felt surprisingly strong. "I've got a lot of energy, maybe I can finish this," he told himself.

With six miles to go in the race, he continued to push himself beyond his comfort zone.

Then came the rains, and it became noticeably colder. A few times he convinced himself that finishing the race might not really matter.

But then it dawned on him that he hadn't told anyone that he would actually be running, and there was the fact that his car was parked in the stadium garage. Soon, though, the finish line came into view, and as he usually does in those kinds of races, he sprinted to the finish.

By the time he got home, he could barely walk. Amy was shocked. But he had finished his first marathon in 4 hours and 32 minutes.

...

Mohammad Bahmani came to the U.S. in 1977. One day back in Iran, on a visit to an outdoor bazaar, he noticed a T-shirt for sale with the words "Saint Louis University" on it. He bought it and took it home.

"What does that say on the T-shirt?" his mother asked.

"I have no idea," he responded.

The answer came when he befriended two men from New York who happened to be in Iran teaching English. Before long he was learning bits and pieces of English and taking the Americans' class. Once he discovered what was on the T-shirt, he told them, "I'd really like to go there, but I don't know anybody."

Don't worry, they told him, we'll help.

The Americans filled out his admission papers, and Saint Louis University accepted him. His parents were less than enthusiastic. "I can't afford it. I'm a teacher," his father told him. "One semester to go to school is more than the salary that I make in three years."

His mother "freaked out." Even though she wanted him to stay, she eventually told him to "just follow your dreams."

Mohammad Bahmani arrived at the dorms in St. Louis during the dead of winter. He had a little money and only a few clothes. The clothes including the T-shirt to which his mother, who was convinced he would be robbed, had sewn an inside pocket to hide his money. Though he had always been shy, he found the new culture exhilarating.

After finishing up an English program, he transferred to SIUE.

In one of his classes he met Amy, and six months later they were married in a ceremony at the campus Religious Center. In July they will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. "Meeting my wife was the best thing that ever happened to me," he says.

It was the same, he says, for their two daughters and one son. Each graduated from SIUE and today they all have responsible jobs. "Everybody says their kids are great, but my kids are truly great. They occupied our lives for 25 years. I tried to give them everything I didn't have," he says.

Mohammad and Amy followed them around from practice to practice: soccer, baseball, wrestling and football.

During those years, Mohammad acknowledges that he consumed more pizzas and nachos than was wise. He also stopped biking and playing soccer. Eventually his weight would balloon to 250 pounds.

Mohammad says that while he enjoyed every minute he devoted to raising their children, the lifestyle he adopted had a negative effect on his health.

Meanwhile it wasn't until the 1990s that he was able to obtain a VISA and return to Iran to visit his parents. Revolution and war had kept him out of the country for more than a dozen years, and when he got there he was shocked to find his parents in poor health.

His family had a history of diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Bahmani has always been close to his family, but he recalls seeing their failing health and thinking "You know what, I want to be somebody who pushes my grandkids in a stroller. I don't want them pushing me in a wheelchair."

About three years ago, he learned that his cholesterol had climbed to 250, and his blood pressure was dangerously high as well. The pills he was given to reduce the cholesterol had little effect, he says now.

But he enrolled in a boot camp and began running more. Within six months Bahmani had dropped about 25 pounds. In the next three years he would lose 83 pounds, dropping from 250 to 167.

When his friends signed up for the 2015 St. Patrick's Parade Run, a 5-mile run through downtown St. Louis, he signed up as well.